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Upcoming UN Commissions

In 1995 at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, a remarkable document was created, theBeijing Declaration and Platform for Action. The main focus of the upcoming Commission on the Status of Women (9-20 March 2015) will be on the review of this Declaration and its progress, including current challenges that affect its implementation and the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of women. The session will also address opportunities for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women in the post-2015 development agenda. For more information seewww.unwomen.org/en/csw/csw59-2015

You may know that last year there was a world-wide push to have a Fifth World Conference on Women this year, to commemorate the 20th Beijing anniversary, but plans for that were cancelled when—unfortunately—the international community of women became afraid that re-opening a session at this time in history would result in a loss of the gains that have been made! So they substituted a group of five regional meetings held all over the world, and each was to come up with a document that would be presented to the CSW. The five regions were: Africa; Europe / North America; Latin America / Caribbean; Asia / Pacific, and Western Asia. Those will be interesting to compare!

The Commission on Social Development will be held on 4-13 February 2015. The theme this year is “Rethinking and strengthening social development in the contemporary world.” As in the past, the Commission is preceded (on 3 February) by a one-dayCivil Society Forum which gives NGOs a chance to develop the theme for ourselves and put the finishing touches on our Civil Society Declaration, which is presented to the member states at the first meeting of the Commission. For more information seehttp://undesadspd.org/CommissionforSocialDevelopment/Sessions/2015.aspx